Beginner's Guide to PPC Search Engines (Part 1)

Yahoo! Sponsored Search™

Yahoo! Sponsored Search is the new name for what was recently called Overture Precision Match. Sponsored Search prominently displays your business in search results on some of the top U.S. search properties.

With Sponsored Search, you set the price you're willing to pay for each customer who clicks on your listing.

If you create a keyword campaign and your bid buys their "premium listings" (top 3 positions) for particular keywords or search phrases, your bid buys you top listings on Yahoo's partner sites (Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, InfoSpace, Excite, AllTheWeb and a range of news and content portals, such as CNN).

For example, go to AllTheWeb and type in a search for “used cars”. Take note of the top 3 spots. Now go to MSN Search and type in a search for “used cars”. You'll see that the "Sponsored Sites" listings in the green box at the top (and/or the text ads to the right) contain the same top 3 listings from AllTheWeb. The regular MSN directory listings follow underneath the green box. So basically, purchasing PPC listings on Yahoo! can give you top billing on other major search engines too.

For a monthly fee, listings can be automatically monitored using the Yahoo! Search Optimizer to ensure bid amounts are consistent to attain target positions without going over budget. Volume levels are determined by your budget, as you only pay for the traffic delivered.

How much you pay depends on the keyword or phrase you are bidding on and what position you want to purchase. Each account has a USD20 minimum monthly spend and a USD30 non-refundable initial deposit is required to open the account (which is applied to click-throughs). There is a minimum bid requirement of USD 0.10 per click through and you pay the bid price EACH TIME somebody clicks your ad from Yahoo! and their partner listings.  

With the large traffic numbers driven to your site via Yahoo! Sponsored Search, the costs of keyword bid campaigns can quickly add up, so I highly recommend deciding on a total budget so that you can develop a cost effective keyword bid allocation and maintenance plan combining both premium (top 3) and other listings.

Yahoo! provides detailed reporting tools to help you track the performance of the PPC campaign and traffic generated. Yahoo! also offers a special Keyword Selector Tool to assist in the selection of your keywords, a View Bids Tool, where you can see the current maximum bids and listings for the top 3 advertisers on any search term, a PPC ROI Calculator and a CPM ROI Calculator.

Yahoo! offers two sign-up plans, Fast Track™ or Self Serve, giving you the choice of expert assistance or starting out on your own. With Fast Track™, Yahoo! experts research your website and recommend effective search terms based on the content of your site and Yahoo!'s editorial guidelines. They also create customized ad titles and descriptions based on those search terms. Fast Track™ has a one time service fee of USD199, while Self Serve is free.

For more information on Yahoo! Sponsored Search, Click Here.